In our posts, we frequently mention that generative AI is one of the biggest milestones in this area. It’s transforming almost every industry and market sector, including healthcare.
In this sector, generative AI can be used to streamline communication with patients, accelerate diagnosing diseases, develop personalized treatment plans, and support administrative staff in their daily tasks. Let’s have a look at how generative AI comes in handy for medical and healthcare companies!
Depending on the data you can access (and are willing to share with AI algorithms – consider the safety of sensitive patient healthcare information!), you can create and utilize different AI-powered tools that make your work faster and more effective. Let’s start with intelligent patient assistants.
Chatbots and patient assistants
When we talk about generative AI, chatbots are almost always the very first thing that comes to mind, and rightly so! Smart assistants can support patients 24/7, all year round. They are never tired, never on sick leave, never irritated after hearing the same question for the 20th time today.
Generative AI chatbots are also more natural and human-like in communication. That’s because they utilize advanced AI-related technologies such as machine learning and NLP. As a result, they don’t need to operate on scripted responses or stick to specific rules. They answer and learn as they go, which makes them sound like human assistants.
What can healthcare chatbots be used for? They can handle almost all repetitive tasks, such as answering FAQs, providing healthcare tips that are tailored to a given patient’s situation, scheduling consultations and follow-up calls, and even conducting initial interviews with the patient to assess their situation and condition. Chatbots, when paired with other medical equipment, can also conduct simple medical tests, such as:
- Blood pressure measurement
- Blood sugar level measurement
- Height and weight measurement
As a result, these assistants can significantly streamline initial healthcare stages and give human doctors and nurses more time to concentrate on the most urgent and serious cases. And with support of machine learning, chatbots continue to learn and adapt, making the scope of support they can provide be wider and wider.
Diagnosing diseases and medical conditions
Of course, we’re not saying that generative AI tools can replace human diagnosticians. But they surely can support them in their work. After all, diagnosing is basically drawing conclusions from available patient data (including their parameters, test results, and medical history). Generative AI tools can take in all that data and analyze it within seconds in order to provide the physician with the most probable diagnoses. This, again, shortens the time necessary to start treating a given patient and gives the doctors more input on the given patient’s condition. It’s already been proven that artificial intelligence can be more effective at identifying patterns and anomalies compared to human doctors.
This is true, especially in radiology, where AI tools can analyze medical images and look for diseases such as tumors, cancers and other alarming symptoms. As a result, doctors can focus on treating patients and not spend time analyzing X-rays and other medical images. This is possible thanks to the extensive training that such tools go through at the very beginning. They get thousands of photos to analyze so that they can “learn” what to look for in the picture. Since they are also trained on photos, including rare or atypical conditions, they can spot conditions or diseases that are not immediately apparent.
Personalized treatment plans
Generative AI can also support you when it comes to the development of personalized treatment plans for each patient. Treatment plans should be tailored not just to given patient’s condition, but also their medical history, lifestyle and even genetic predispositions. Generative AI tools can take all those elements into account and provide doctors with comprehensive treatment plans that take all those elements in to account.
This is especially vital when it comes to cancer patients and their genetic information. Based on that input, generative AI tools can identify specific mutations and predict how the patient might respond to various treatments. This way, doctors can ensure that the patient gets the most effective treatment at the earliest possible stage.
Here, there is one more thing that’s important to mention. Generative AI can also adapt to changing circumstances and change its recommendations almost as you go. New patient information can be sent to the algorithm and the medical team with receive updated treatment plan in response, frequently within seconds!
Support in administrative tasks
The last thing we want to mention is the support in administrative tasks. In healthcare, there’s quite a lot of them. After all, there is scheduling appointments and tests, billing, keeping medical records updated, and organizing all that in an effective manner. This is where gen AI steps in the game because the vast majority of these tasks can be automated, at least partly.
For example, AI-powered algorithms can help your team deal with appointment scheduling by considering multiple factors, such as:
- Given physician’s availability
- The urgency of the case
- Patient preferences
- Type of the appointment (test, consultation, follow-up visit, etc.)
Thus, making appointment scheduling much faster and more effective compared to human employees who would have to analyze all these factors manually.
Gen AI comes in handy also when it comes to billing and medical insurance. Here, AI can help your staff analyze and process medical claims, flag potential errors, and conduct initial interview with the patient. This also reduces the time needed to handle each case.
Wrapping up
There is no doubt that gen AI is a game-changer in the healthcare sector. All of the tools and solutions we described in this post are already available! All you need to do is implement them in your company or clinic/hospital. In order to do so, you will most likely need the support of an experienced AI consulting company that specializes in healthcare. If you’re looking for such help, make sure to talk to Addepto: https://addepto.com/.
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.